Saturday, January 30, 2016

I guess the odds of winning the lottery and getting pooped on are the same. Well I got pooped on by a seagull so I guess I need to buy that lottery ticket. Unfortunately it happened the day after the power ball drawing. That is my story and I am sticking to it. Fortunately, it was mainly on my jacket and luckily I wasn't wearing my nice wool jacket.

Stencil's Make Cool Shadow's

I broke out my stencils to make my homemade valentine's. My hometown is Loveland, Colorado. I don't live there anymore but I still re-mail from Loveland. IT IS NOT TO LATE TO RE-MAIL- February 6th is the cutoff for out of state valentine's to be re-mailed from the City of Love - Loveland, CO.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

My family loves the canned orange rolls but ON A DARK STORMY morning I decided to make some from scratch, Hey, who is motivated to bake on a dark and stormy night but a dark and stormy morning is a total different matter. That is my story and I am going with it.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The playground structure in background is built to look similar lighthouse that was here originally

It has been forever since I have had a playground review. My kids are teenagers but we had a chance to visit Blaine, Washington's newest playground - Marine Park Playground. I thought it deserved a review. This park is right along the waterfront with views of Vancouver and the Peace Arch Border Crossing.

Nice Size Climbing Rock

Ship complete with sails

This park contains two great play structures. One is a light house and the other is a giant sailing ship. There are lots of things to explore besides the slides and such - bells to ring, drums to play, rain sounds to make, optical illusions to see. This is a thoughtfully designed playground. There is a gang plank to the ship that is accessible to strollers and wheelchairs. There are rest rooms nearby in the adjacent building and across the street at the marina.

Along with all the great hands on things for kids are picture panels of the waterfront with snippets of the history of Blaine's water front.

This is a great place to visit if
If you sat in the long wait at Peace Arch border crossing, this is a great place to get the wiggles out.

In the summer if you just took the Plover Ferry from Semiamhoo, this is a great place to bring your lunch and catch a later ferry back

You brought out of town guests to visit Peace Arch State Park. There are only swings at the Peace Arch so after look at the arch venture over to this great kids park. Adults get their history and garden fun at Peace Arch and kids get their fun at Marine Park Playground.

The Lighthouse Play Structure would be awesome to watch the sunset from.

IF you haven't been reading Victoria Elizabeth Barnes blog and her love for GIANT FANCY THINGS - You really have been missing out. I think we might be soul sisters. Check out her latest post - Giant Fancy Things ... Cheaper than Therapy

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Loveland Colorado is my Hometown. It is a family tradition to remail our Valentines from Loveland. I usually send out far more valentine's than Christmas cards. It is a sweet way to give your valentine card some VIP treatment. When you remail from Loveland - you get a cache stamped on the front of envelope that changes each year and the Loveland postmark.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Dear Diary
My creative process at best can be summed up as MESSY. I cook messy and I create messy too. I have been trying to come up with my all important valentine card. I had a spare hour last week so I got all the supplies out and played around. I have been experimenting with some print making. I was simply using those kid foam stickers on cardboard in essence making my own stamp. (in above pic). I painted over the homemade stamp and pressed the paper into it. I was only mildly successful in getting a nice clear print.

The above picture. I put foam sticker on the paper and painted around the bird foam stickers. I then peeled the stickers off. The stickers came off OK.

When I watched kids, my absolute favorite thing to do with them was to craft. They have no fear and the kids embrace the mess. With young kids it is about the messy process not the product. In the end, none of these ideas are what I went with for my valentine card but it was fun to break out of the routine.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

We are, I guess di,e hard geocachers. When we heard there was going to be a cache machine nearby, we knew we were going. A cache machine is a set route of geocaches that people cache as a group. This one I believe had 79 caches on its route. We invited our friend Cheezer to round out our group.

My husband looks less thrilled

We did several earthcaches which are geocaches that bring you to a location to teach you about a earth feature and there is no physical cache. Instead you answer a series of questions about the location the coordinates bring you to. The first earthcache on the route was on Pass Island on Deception Pass. Cheezer found a golf ball. That is random.

There is another earthcache on Goose Rock Trail which I would like to do one day.

Another Earthcache location - large random rock

Near the end we get a little loopy. We cached a little over 7 hours. That is a lot of driving and finding.

I think we ended the day with 45 caches of which included 2 events, 3 earthcaches, a multi cache. Not a bad day of caching. We ended the day by eating Chinese buffet.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Well technically I didn't read this in January but at the end of December but I thought this deserved a mention.

The Woman who Heard Color by Kelly Jones

The book is about a woman, Hanna who lives in Germany and hears color. That is called sysnesthia. I had never heard of that before. She marries who employer a Jewish gallery owner who specialized in modern art works. She then starts to work in his gallery. One of her favorite artists was Kandinsky who also heard in color. When WWII starts she is eventually has to sell gallery and the Germans draft her into catalogue all the works of art. Later an art detective, Lauren comes to find out what happened to all the works of art in hopes of returning the artwork to their rightful owners.

Recently, there has been lots of books/movies about the theft of art by the Nazi. While "The Woman Who Heard Color" is a work a fiction. It rings true to the real life account about what happened to art during World War II. This fictional work was a hard to put down read.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

I was lucky to get to go to Colorado with my kids and visit my parents the week before Christmas. We left Christmas Day. I thought I would share a few pictures. It is hard to narrow down what to share.

cousin's in front of stables

Cody

As luck would have it , some of the Clydesdale horses were at the Budweiser Plant in Ft Collins over the holidays. It was amazing to see these creatures up close. These horses are HUGE! They had three horses in their stables taking a vacay from the west coast team.

I-25 North to Loveland

THERE WAS SNOW! Colorado got about 10 inches before we got there and while there they got a tiny bit of snow.

My parents live in Loveland so we also visited the Loveland Museum. This is a great place to walk through with some interactive exhibits. Loveland you have a sugar factory so there is a huge display about sugar beets. After the museum we went to visit Mariano Medina's grave an early settler of the Loveland area. These were recently moved back closer to their original location. Back in the day, I guess my grandfather was involved in moving the graves to a nearby park but now are back in their original location.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

According to my handy dandy calendar today, January 5th, is National Bird Day so it is only appropriate I post some pictures of some birds.

I have been seeing lots of post about flocks ( yes flocks) of the eagles hanging out at nearby river to partake in the chum salmon run. So New Year's Eve Day we decided to headed to nearby Deming Washington and see what we could see. We were not disappointed there were about 20 hanging out near the Nooksack River. There were also lots of people with their professional camera gear. My point and shoot did get this good picture of two eagles in the river. It was amazing to see them up close. You can't help but say what magnificent birds.

Walking is my exercise choice. HOWEVER I do my best walking with my friends. Walking is way better with company. I use a fit bit and I think it is a good motivator. Walking is a bit exercise and a bit therapy for me.

Blog wise my most read posts were my Book reviews aka What I Read linky at Modern Mrs Darcy. I plan on continuing to READ lots and lots of books and give my little book reports